


Moments in Time

by Pom_Rania



Series: Little By Little [35]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blind Kanan Jarrus, Cybernetics, Dokma Races, Drabble Collection, Gen, Hera can make tough decisions, Kanan and Rex are drinking buddies, Maul has issues, Minor Original Character(s), POV Child, POV Nonhuman, Paperwork, Permanent Injury, References to Drunk Driving, Trapped In Elevator, Zeb's secret waffle stash, assistive technology, drawgust17, mentions of brain injury and spinal cord injury, or the space equivalent of drunk driving, some of these chapters are canon-compliant while others are not, space braille, visually-impaired Ezra Bridger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-12-14 23:25:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 31
Words: 13,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11793627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pom_Rania/pseuds/Pom_Rania
Summary: Short stories following the #drawgust17 prompts. Not in any kind of chronological order.





	1. sour

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set around the first chapter of 'Lesson One'.

Hera Syndulla did what needed to be done. She always had, and she didn’t regret it. Sometimes however it left a bad taste in her mouth, like she had bitten into a sour fruit. 

  She did what she had to do; for Ezra, for the crew, and for the Rebellion. There were more important things than how she felt about it. 

  She didn’t wish that it could be otherwise, not for long. She was suited for her role, and she wouldn’t force her responsibilities onto somebody else just because of painful or difficult decisions. 

  Ideally, there never would have been a problem in the first place. In an ideal world, Ezra would be perfectly healthy, Kanan wouldn’t have been injured, the Empire never would have existed, and the Clone Wars never would have hurt Ryloth. But they didn’t live in an ideal world, and while hope was indeed a powerful force, it couldn’t change the past. All they could do was try and build a better future, with the present they had at hand. 

  Hope wasn’t about wishing that the world was different. Hope was looking at the world, and seeing how it _could_ be different, and then working to make that vision into reality. If what she had was a sour fruit, then to hope would be to make that fruit into a pie or something; not changing what she had, but making it more palatable. 

  Or so she assumed. She had never known much about cooking. Her point still stood, even if the metaphor was off.


	2. break

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set a few years in the future.

Despite all the changes – some good, some bad – that Ezra had gone through since he first joined the crew, despite all the years, he could still be such a _child_. Sabine wasn’t sure how to deal with this latest incident, and Ezra – blast his composure – undoubtedly was aware of her inner turmoil. 

  “What is it?” he innocently asked, eyes focusing somewhere over her left shoulder. He was doing that on purpose, she knew it, and he knew that she knew it; he could pinpoint someone accurately enough to, if not exactly meet their gaze, at least be looking at their upper face. He had been able to do so for years, it was habitual by now, which meant that whenever he _didn’t_ , he was either very tired or it was intentional. 

  He wasn’t tired. 

  “Ezra Bridger,” she calmly said. “Even setting aside the issue of your using _my_ paints without permission, let’s take a look _don’t say it_ at the numbers here. I had ten different colours of paint available. If only two are selected each time, that gives 45 different potential combinations. Out of all of those, only three look eye-bleedingly horrible together. And you expect me to believe that, through sheer random chance, you happened to pick all three of them?!” She resisted the urge to facepalm. “Do you have any idea how unlikely that is?”

  A grin threatened to break through on his face. “You’re the genius,” he said, “why don’t you tell me.” He hastily brought his expression back to a neutral state, and widened his eyes. “Surely you aren’t insinuating that I did that intentionally. I haven’t been able to distinguish colours for years.” He forced a sniff, but the effect was ruined by the hint of amusement in his eyes. 

  She gave in to the urge to facepalm. “Just tell me who helped you with picking out the colours, so I’ll know who I need to make clean this all up. Along with you,” she added, “you’re not getting out of this. And if you don’t tell me who your accomplice was, you’ll be cleaning it up all by yourself.”

  That, she was pleased to note, got the desired reaction.


	3. lift

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References something that as of mid-August 2017 hasn't yet been posted; once it has, I'll edit this note.

Awkwardness was inevitable when two or more people were stuck together in a confined space for an unknown length of time. In the current instance, it was five. The elevators aboard that ship were somewhat larger than standard, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been; still, Zeb could think of many things he would rather be doing at the moment. 

  “It should be fixed soon!” an unreasonably-cheery voice had said; but everyone knew that “soon”, when a mechanic was referring to how long repairs would take, did not really overlap with the meaning of “soon” as used by everyone else. “We’ll get this lift up and running – literally – in no time, so just stay tight.”

  Somebody else had muttered that they didn’t have any other options; but it quickly settled into just standing, waiting, and not looking at anybody else. 

  Zeb considered his fellow – was “passengers” the right word to use? They weren’t going anywhere at the moment, but they had been, and hopefully would again soon. He didn’t know any of them by name, but all of them seemed familiar, to various degrees. 

  It wasn’t like he had anything else to do. 

  He shifted his weight, and cleared his throat. “I came here to report on something,” he began, “but I may as well start now.” He retrieved the datapad from its pocket, and called up the relevant file. “Now, there were some things I came across on my sweep of the perimeter....”


	4. depth

EzraBridger was queried as to the depth of the hole. EzraBridger returned a negative reply. The illumination was insufficient for his inferior organic senses, EzraBridger responded. (He did not use that precise phrasing.)

  Chopper maneuvered to the vicinity, and scanned the hole himself. Once the measurements were acquired, he scolded EzraBridger. If the organic was unable to assist in mapping the surroundings, the organic should stay out of the way and attempt to be useful in another manner. 

  Months later, Chopper reviewed the recording of that incident. He took note of the then-disregarded expression exhibited by EzraBridger. It was subtle, and he would not have recognized it then, but he now knew what it meant.


	5. desperate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set just after 'Steps into Shadow'.

There was a kind of desperation in Ezra’s face, in the lines of his body, as he watched Kanan. Sabine didn’t know what to make of it. Maybe he was trying to convince himself that all the damage had been fixed and he didn’t have to feel bad any more, even though nobody blamed Ezra except for Ezra. 

  “Don’t stare too much,” she lightly teased, trying to ease the mood, “Hera might think you’re encroaching on her territory.”

  Ezra shook his head. “Their relationship isn’t like that.” He frowned. “I think? One time Kanan was talking about how the Jedi used to be and mentioned something about attachments, I asked him about Hera, and he just rolled his eyes and told me to practice meditating some more.”

  No matter how much function Kanan had regained with the Force, Sabine didn’t know if he even _could_ still roll his eyes. Never mind the mask he wore which covered the area, or the clouding which made it difficult to distinguish iris and pupil from the rest of it. 

  “Since he’s been getting out more now,” she said instead, “that one betting pool has picked up. You know, the one about whether he and Hera are married or not.”

  Ezra turned to look at her. “Wait what? That’s an actual thing? I thought it was just Zeb making a joke!”

  “Nope, it’s real. And it goes beyond just ‘married’, 'not in a relationship’, and 'not officially married but might as well be’. Someone’s put down money that Kanan will propose to Hera in a year, and in response to that someone else bet that _Hera_ would be the one to propose, someone else had it that they actually got married years ago while drunk but neither of them remember it….” 

  She decided not to share the one which said that Hera and Kanan had been in a three-way relationship with Ahsoka and were staying apart as a show of mourning. Sabine _was_ capable of exercising discretion, and mentioning Ahsoka probably wasn’t a good idea when Ezra might not be in the best of moods. 

  “Really,” Ezra said, an odd expression on his face, like he couldn’t decide whether to be fascinated or disgusted or what. “Which one is in the lead?”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t check.”

  “Oh.”

  Kanan was meeting with some of the newer members on base now, people who had joined after Malachor. She couldn’t tell what they were saying from that distance, but it looked like they had gotten past introductions and the worst of the awkwardness. 

  She nudged Ezra. “Don’t you know some of those people? You can share things that will help him keep them all straight, there’s a lot of new voices he’s trying to learn today.”

  “He’s getting along fine. He doesn’t need my help,” he protested. 

  “He doesn’t,” she agreed. “But you don’t need an excuse to go and talk to him. He’s family, and you two haven’t been around each other much lately.”

  “Do I _have_ to?”

  She considered that. “Not if it makes you really uncomfortable,” she finally said. “But it’s only going to get worse with time.”

  He muttered something, and from his tone of voice, she was glad that she couldn’t tell exactly what it was. He made an effort to relax, and smiled. It was weak, but it was a try. “Okay,” he said. 

  Kanan gestured in their direction, and waved. Sabine didn’t know which of them it was intended for, but it wasn’t like she had been told to stay away. “You can do what you want, but I’m going to catch up with Kanan and the others,” she said. 

  After a moment, Ezra followed her.


	6. freedom

Hobbie enjoyed flying. For a pilot as good as him – and he _was_ good, there was no room for false modesty – it was all but inevitable. He liked the responsiveness of the machine to his control, the rush of knowing that only the hull and his own skill lay between him and a burning or choking demise, the satisfaction of doing something that he excelled at, and having in front of him the freedom and infinite possibilities of space. 

  The thought of having to give that all up, even if it wasn’t him, made him feel sick. He knew that someone could live like that, and live quite well apparently, but he didn’t _understand_ it, and never wanted to.


	7. right

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set some time before 'First Steps', but after they've moved to Chopper Base.

“You don’t have a right to do this!”

  “I think you’ll find that I do,” Hera coldly said. “I am responsible for all the pilots in my squadron, and you put every single one of them at risk with your actions.” 

  “Nobody was hurt! At least, none of us. That base was a target anyways.”

  “And that is the only reason I’m having a civil conversation with you right now, instead of speaking to you through the forcefield of a detainment cell.” She put her hands behind her back. “It was sheer luck that prevented things from going horribly wrong, and we can’t trust that it will happen again. We can’t trust _you_ , not now at least.”

  “If you think that I’m the only one –”

  “–to drink on base, is that what you were going to say?” She turned and began pacing. “That it was some harmless fun, a good way to relax, and you’re _only human_?” She spoke the words like they were rotting carcasses. “I may not particularly approve of consuming alcohol while we’re in the middle of a war, but I understand it. It’s a way that many people use to deal with what they face, a social bonding activity, and a few just like the taste for some reason. I’ve flown into battle alongside pilots suffering a hangover because the Empire doesn’t respect vacation time, and I’ve done my best to help them. But _you_ ….”

  She turned back to the luckless pilot. “This wasn’t a surprise mission. You had two days’ warning that this was going to happen. And in that time, you not only chose to get drunk, you made that decision late enough in the interval that you were _still_ drunk when we took off.

  "If you were impaired – for _any_ reason – you should have informed me, so I could temporarily take you off duty so that you wouldn’t imperil the mission. You would have faced some consequences for your behaviour, but they would have been milder. However, as you put everyone at risk, nearly ruined the mission, and the only reason you’re still _alive_ to be reprimanded is through the random whims of chance, things will be harsher.”

  Only silence, sullen and apprehensive. 

  “I’m glad you understand. Now, we’re not so desperate that we’ll field people who may be as much of a risk to us as to the enemy. In addition to being grounded until I feel confident that nothing like this will ever happen again, your fighter will be temporarily reassigned to other members of the squadron as needed. Tomorrow you will be given your duties for the interim. Dismissed.”

   Hera waited until she was alone, then slumped and sighed.


	8. wrong

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set in the time between seasons two and three; it seems pretty obvious to me, but with how often I'm jumping around here, it'd probably be better to say when every chapter takes place.

Kanan’s fingers dug into her arm, but Sabine didn’t mention it. She could only imagine how disorienting the crowd must be for someone who couldn’t see it. Then again, he had been the one to ask her if she could take him there, and he was perfectly capable of saying that he wanted to go back to the Ghost. 

  “We’re here, I take it,” he needlessly said. 

  “Yeah. It’s....” He wouldn’t know any of the landmarks she could give. “It’s a bit out of the way. I heard that there’s talk of moving it to another location though.”

  “What does it look like?” His head turned like he was looking around, as if there was some angle which would allow him to see through the bandages – not medically necessary any more, but they seemed to make him more comfortable – and damaged eyes.

  She wasn’t going to be able to fully describe the track in all its aspects, the lights and shadows and colours, but maybe she could get across the most important bits. “It’s a straight track, with knee-high fencing at the sides to keep the dokma more or less where they should be, and lanes marked out by stones. Everything was hastily set up and it shows. The –”

  She was cut off by a nearby incoherent scream. Kanan jerked back in surprise, almost sending her to the ground, but they both managed to regain their balance. 

  “No!” the screamer yelled out to the track, and the dokma on it. “You are going the _wrong way_! Again! Still!” The person in loudly sighed, and then stormed off. 

  The outburst didn’t attract as much attention as it would have earlier in the evening, when things were generally quieter, but there was still a bunch of people looking in their direction. 

  “What was that about?” Kanan asked. “What happened?”

  “I guess the one they bet on didn’t... um.”

  Sabine realized that he knew almost nothing about how the dokma races went, probably only what he’d overheard. “Each of the critters for the race is painted, to be able to identify them, and whichever crosses the finish line first, wins,” she explained. “So far so basic. Only, they don’t care about the finish line, probably don’t even know it exists. They go in whatever direction they feel like, stop whenever they feel like, and there’s only one time I’ve ever seen one go in a straight line without stopping, and that was when someone had taped it to one of those small cleaning droids.” As an afterthought, she added “It wasn’t hurt.”

  There was an odd sound. “Which?”

  “Huh?”

  “The dokma or the droid? Which of them wasn’t hurt?”

  She turned back to look. Was Kanan... laughing? It was a far cry from how he used to be, but parsecs better than he had been. 

  A smile crept onto her face. 

  “Both, actually. Once they were separated, they just kept on doing what they had been doing.” 

  She closed her eyes for a moment. She could hear the good-natured chatter, friendly arguments about who was going to win and what they would do with their winnings, running commentary on the lack of running.... 

  She opened her eyes. “There are four critters on the track at the moment; there’s normally five, I don’t know what happened today. They’re painted green, white, red, and black. The red one is just standing still, and the green one is ambling back to the starting line....”


	9. emergency

Zeb liked to tell himself that he was saving his stash of waffles for an emergency. Of course, “emergency” often ended up being defined as “I’m hungry and I want to eat them”.


	10. relationship

Sabine sat down, putting her eyes at the same level as Chopper’s optics. “We need to talk.”

  The droid chattered back, that whatever she thought it was, he hadn’t done it. 

  “It’s not that, although now I’m wondering....” She shook her head. “I wanted to ask you something. I don’t know if you’ll have an answer, but Zeb just said I should ignore it, Hera’s busy and frustrated with something else and I don’t want to bother her, and there’s no way I’m asking Kanan or Ezra.”

  Chopper hummed. Was it about human males, or about Jedi? 

  “The second one. Well, kind of.” She pushed her hair back. “I only heard this second- or third-hand, but I can’t stop thinking about it. A rumour that there’s something wrong with the Force and that’s why Kanan and Ezra are....”

  Experiencing problems with their optics, Chopper finished.

  “Yeah. That.” She crossed her arms, then uncrossed them. “It can’t be true, can it? I mean, you were in the Clone Wars, you’ve known Kanan longer than any of us except Hera, you might have learned something.”

  He gave a series of contemplative beeps. His unit hadn’t had a Jedi attached to it, and Kanan avoided talking about the Force until Ezra joined; but Chopper was both more intelligent and observant than an organic, so he could assist SabineWren. 

  She snorted. “Thanks, I think.”

  They only knew of two living Jedi, Chopper continued, which was an insufficient sample size. Any observed relationship of variables was just as likely to be coincidence as meaningful. 

  “Great. So there’s no way to tell.” She sighed. “That doesn’t help. I mean, it’s not like there’s anything I could do to change it or fix things, but still... you’d just call me an ‘irrational organic’, I know it.”

  She was correct in her last statement, the droid pointed out, a hint of smugness in his tone. However, he could provide more facts which might aid her state of mind. The only thing which could be described as possibly altering the Force, the rise of the Empire and the extermination of the Jedi, had occurred years ago, and KananJarrus and EzraBridger had been fully sighted for most of those years. The Inquisitors and DesignationMaul, who despite not being Jedi still drew on the Force, had appeared to have completely functional optics. 

  Chopper waved a manipulator. Organics were irrational, he continued. They found patterns where none existed, because they were unable to tolerate the concept of randomness, and then they spread their faulty reasoning to vulnerable members of their kind. 

  It wouldn’t be Chopper if he didn’t manage to work an insult into his attempt at comfort, Sabine thought. Yet, despite all that, it did help, in a way. “Got it,” she said.


	11. condition

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place somewhere in the nebulous future; not too far off, maybe a few months.

As a youngling and then as a padawan, Kanan hadn’t heard much about the Techno Union. They were aligned with the Separatists, and might have been responsible for battle droid designs, and that’s all he would have been able to say.

  Now, however, he could add a new descriptor to the list: they were terribly annoying, like the worst bits of a salesperson and evangelist combined into one being that _wouldn’t stop talking_.

  The Techno Union member – _former_ member, the group had been disbanded years ago – was so choked with metal and cybernetics that Kanan had a hard time getting a read on the person. The voice was artificial too, so it was only a feel in the Force presence which let him realize their contact was female. 

  “They may be slightly used, but they’re still in good condition,” she continued with her spiel. “It’s a simple enough procedure, nothing deeply invasive like some others, and I’m reasonably sure I can carry it out safely with some assistance. Human – you are human, right? – anatomy can’t be that much different. Wouldn’t you like to be able to see sounds?”

  “My hearing is good enough, getting that information visually would not be a substantial improvement,” Kanan said, tactfully refraining from mentioning all the other problems with her offer. “Now, about that information on troop movements you said –”

  She turned her attentions to Ezra. “You can’t see small details or in low-light conditions,” she began. “Sub-ocular implants will correct both issues. It may take a few months, but I know some storage –”

  “It wouldn’t work,” Ezra said through gritted teeth, but she didn’t seem to hear him; or if she did, she didn’t pay attention to rejection. He sighed. 

  Kanan leaned in towards Ezra. “When Sabine got back from making contact,” he murmured, “she was definitely frustrated; and then when she suggested that we should be the ones to take this mission, her amusement was so strong I could almost see it. I think this was her idea of a joke.”

  Ezra probably grinned weakly. It was the kind of thing that he would do. “I’m glad she got some enjoyment out of it.” He shuffled his feet. “All that talking will stop eventually, right? It can’t go on forever. Then we can get what we came here for, and then we can leave.”

  _And figure out a way to get back at Sabine for this_ , Ezra didn’t say, but it was clear.


	12. finish

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon-compliant.

Kanan’s assistance did not make the process of going through mission reports noticeably faster. He worked more slowly than Hera; he had to listen to everything, and he wasn’t as familiar with the format and contents as she was. For her part, Hera found that she stopped more often when he was there to distract her, either with a request for help, or just his presence. She would find herself chatting instead of working, and be more open to suggestions of taking a break. 

  Still, it was more enjoyable, and she didn’t regret it. That work needed to get done eventually, but it wasn’t as if they were going any slower than she had on her own.

  Hera made sure to watch Kanan carefully for signs of frustration or exhaustion. He had seemed _happy_ at the prospect of being able to do paperwork with her again, once they discovered that some reports were in a format his datapad could easily read to him; she didn’t want to take that away from him, by letting him get burned out. If he took on more than he could handle at the moment, because he felt like he should be able to do that much... he was in a way better state now, but she had still witnessed the painful consequences, and didn’t want to go through that again if it could be avoided. 

  She saw him remove the earpiece, rub at his forehead, and then do nothing; on someone else, she would have said that it was staring off into space. 

  “Finish up the one you’re working on, and then we’ll call it a day,” she said. “We’ve gotten enough done for the moment.”

  Kanan seemed relieved to hear that. She’d made a good call in judging his energy levels. “I just finished this one,” he said. “Perfect timing.” He carefully put away his earpiece, and stretched. 

  “How was it?” Hera carefully asked. “Anything that we should change for next time?”

  “Not really,” he said. “Although....”

  She waited. 

  “It’s useful that it can read things to me, but I think I’ve heard enough of _that_ voice for a while.”

  That was something she could easily fix. There were numerous preprogrammed voice settings on the datapad; every so often he’d get tired of one, and she’d change it. (Technically he could do it himself, but it was much easier if one could see the interface.) 

  “Do you want me to change it again?”

  “That would be nice. Of course,” he grinned and raised an eyebrow in her direction, “if it was _your_ voice, I’d be able to listen to it all day.”

  She snorted. “If I read the reports to you, that would completely defeat the purpose, of you helping to go through them. And we _did_ try a voice setting that sounded more like me, but you said it was 'too disconcerting’ to listen to for any length of time.”

  “Well then, I guess you’ll just have to read me something else.” He made a completely _ridiculous_ facial expression that was probably meant to be charming and seductive; then he laughed, sharing the amusement in her she must have shown in the Force.

  “After dinner,” Hera said, “unless something comes up.” She stood, and gathered the reports into a neat pile. “First, I want to put all of this away.”

  “Need help carrying anything?” He touched the back of the chair as he came around it; a small gesture, one he probably didn’t even realize he was making. 

  “If you could just take this stack, it’ll be easier.”

  And it was easier, with two people doing the work. In more ways than one.


	13. crossing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set way early on; Ezra is maybe four years old here. Canon compliant.

Auntie was weird. She was Daddy’s Auntie, which meant that Ezra should call her “great”, but she said to just call her Auntie. She read secret messages with her fingers, and ate salty candy and boiled vegetables, and never told him off for making silly faces. 

  She was super old. Maybe even _twenty_. Her hair was grey and she used a cane, even though she didn’t lean on it like most old people did. She said that she remembered Daddy when he was smaller than Ezra was now. She was so silly. Daddy was never that small. 

  She was weird, but Ezra liked Auntie’s visits. She always brought treats for him, even if she kept gross-tasting things for herself, and she listened to him when they went out. When he talked about the colours of all the fruits for sale and how shiny they were, she paid attention to him, and then pointed out the vendor’s windchimes. 

  She told him things Mommy and Daddy didn’t want her to say, but they never said why. They said it was true, what she said, so there was nothing bad with it. 

  There were more people in white shells now, walking in the streets, and they were always grumpy. He didn’t like them. Auntie didn’t like them either. She grumbled whenever she heard them march, and sometimes he thought that she said a bad word. 

  Some white-shell people were at the place where two big streets met, and they ordered traffic around. Auntie started mumbling something as she crossed the road there, and kept at it until they had gone away. 

  Ezra waited until she was done, to be nice, then tugged at her sleeve. “Are those the bucketheads?”

  She put a finger to his cheek, then his lip. “Don’t call them names where they can hear you,” she said, “unless you have a good escape route planned.”

  He made a face. “Escape root?” Was she making words up again?

  “A way to get away quick and safe.”

  He nodded. “Okay.” It sounded silly, but he could use it, for her. 

  “What are you teaching him?” Daddy hissed, from Auntie’s other side. He didn’t like her going outside with Ezra and nobody else along. He said it wasn’t safe. 

  “I’m teaching him how to be smart about it!” she said, like she was trying to be quiet, but Ezra could hear her. “He’s a good kid, he won’t be able to keep silent, just like you can’t, but he hasn’t learned how to keep himself safe.”

  That was wrong. Ezra knew what to do if there was a fire, and he knew how to tell if a fruit had gone bad, and he knew not to get in the way of a speeder. He knew how to keep himself safe from everything.


	14. amount

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The mission Zeb and Sabine were on when they were away. Takes place before 'Important Matters'. Canon-compliant.

“The place we’re going, does it have a name?” Sabine idly asked.

  Zeb glanced over the information they were given. “There’s none listed, just that it’s Riechend’s second moon.” 

  She stretched out. “Whatever that place is like, I hope we find something interesting. I heard from another team, when they were on one of these recon missions, that the planet they checked out was just cold and damp the whole time, and whatever had been there, clearly wasn’t any more. It ended up being a waste of everyone’s time.”

  He shrugged. “As far as I’m concerned, if it gets us off the base for a bit, it wasn’t a waste of time.

*

Zeb peered over Sabine’s shoulder. "Are the scanners picking anything up?”

  She flipped a switch. “Breathable atmosphere, lots of plants, but no sign of any sentient life. At least not any more, there’s a few things that look like they might be abandoned buildings. Nothing from within the last century, that’s for sure.”

  “What about energy signatures?”

  She looked over the results, and frowned. “I’m not sure, they’re kind of borderline. It might be something, or it might just be normal. Wait, now it’s spiking –”

  The ship’s comm unit flickered into life, and began broadcasting a series of beeps. It sounded like Binary, but none of the words were recognizable. 

  He turned to her. “There’s your answer.”

  She grinned back at him. “Let’s check it out.”

*

“Where do I go next to get to the signal’s source?” Sabine yelled.

  “West!”

  “That would be great,” she shouted back, darting between trees, “if only I know which way that was!”

  “I thought you said you had a good sense of direction!”

  “I do!” She grabbed a branch and swung up, narrowly avoiding a set of snapping jaws. “But with the amount of detours I’ve been forced to take, you’ll forgive me for getting a little turned around!”

*

Sabine crossed her arms. “You’re sure that this is where the signal came from,” she flatly said. “There’s nothing here.”

  “Maybe it’s just hidden,” Zeb suggested, but he didn’t sound too convinced either. 

  She sighed, and started poking around. “Hello? Anyone here? What am I doing, there’s no one else here....”

  “Incorrect.”

  They both turned, hands going to their weapons. There was nobody at ground level, but the trees could easily hide someone. They looked up. 

  Now that they were searching, there was a metallic glimmer among the branches. “Greetings,” the unfamiliar voice continued. It sounded like a droid of some kind, with a weird accent. “Might either of you assist me in extracting myself from this position?”

*

Zeb landed easily, the droid’s added weight not throwing off his balance. It climbed off of his back, now that they were safely on the ground.

  “How did you even manage to get wedged into something up there,” he grumbled. 

  The lights on the droid’s optics flickered. “That information was extraneous to my research, so I deleted it. It must have been a very unusual set of circumstances, otherwise my self-preservation routines would have preserved the knowledge so I could avoid the situation in the future.”

  Sabine facepalmed. 

  It rotated to take in both of them. “On behalf of the Geological Academy of the Republic, I offer my gratitude. I would have been unable to take regular measurements if I had remained like that. The scientific community will appreciate your actions.”

  She frowned. “Wait, the Academy of the _Republic_?”

  “That is correct.” The droid dipped its head. “My primary mission is to collect geological data, specifically on this orbiting body, to expand the body of knowledge available to scientists of the Republic.”

  She opened her mouth, then shook her head. “How long have you been here,” she said, mostly to herself. “I think they stopped supporting research expeditions as the Clone Wars dragged on, and the Republic hasn’t existed for years. I’m sorry, but whatever organization you used to work for, it probably isn’t around any more, and there’s a good chance most of the people are dead. The Empire wasn’t kind to academies that weren’t focused on putting out weapons or soldiers.”

  Its optics dimmed momentarily. “That is immaterial. From the beginning, I knew that I would not complete this study within the lifetime of my makers. That is why they sent me here. I do not age. I can make observations for centuries, without suffering the discontinuity that comes from changing personnel.”

  Zeb and Sabine looked at each other. “We can take you somewhere else if you want,” he offered. “There has to be some place left that would appreciate a... geology studies droid, I guess.”

  “The offer is appreciated, but my place is here. I shall continue to fulfill my purpose.”

  “Even if nobody is coming for you?”

  “I shall continue to gather data. Eventually, somebody will arrive who can make use of it. If I am non-functional by that time, I will have preserved the information so it could still be accessed by another.” 

*

“That was just kind of sad,” Sabine said. 

  Zeb shrugged. “Nothing else we can do,” he said. “The droid chose to stay here.”

  “I know, but it still feels... like someone’s wrong.”

  “Of course something’s wrong. It’s the Empire.”

  “I guess you’re right about that.” She forced a smile. “Well, at least now we know why this place was on Namah Neimi’s list! He must have run into that droid too.”

  “Should we go back and ask?”

  They thought for a moment, then both shook their heads at the same time. 

  “No way it would have kept that memory,” she said. 

  “That would definitely be ‘extraneous to research’,” he agreed.

  “At least it’s simple now. Go back to the ship, write up a report, head back to base. Shouldn’t be any problems.”

*

“Where do these things keep coming from?!” Sabine shrieked as she kicked another creature in the snout, before bringing her blaster around. 

  “Less talking, more shooting!” Zeb yelled back. “Careful, wolfigator coming up on your left!”

  She spun to deal with it. “That’s a horrible name!” Her path was clear now, and she dashed to the next small bit of safety represented by the rock. “Let’s call them alligator-wolves instead.”

  “We’ll discuss this later!” 

*

“We survived.”

  “That we did.”

  “It’s going to be a bit of an interesting story to tell.”

  “Yeah. Not looking forward to writing it all up though.”

  “Me neither.”

  They both leaned back in their seats, enjoying the momentary respite. They would still have to make reports, but not at the moment. For now, they could relax in the knowledge that they were safe in the ship, and no longer being chased by nameless gator-wolf creatures.


	15. light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon-compliant if you ignore the last paragraph.

Kanan never would have thought about how he knew if an area was brightly lit, before Malachor. It was simply obvious. In the months afterwards, it didn’t matter to him. If somebody needed a light turned on, they could do it themselves, or ask him. It wasn’t his problem. 

  Now though, he felt the need to be aware of it. 

  The simplest way was to just remember. If someone said that it was bright or dark, if somebody turned a light on or off. However, that required constant awareness. If he missed a change in state because he was distracted, everything from that point onward would be wrong, until it was corrected. 

  It was easier when he was outside, most of the time. Days were bright, and nights were dark, and the two were pretty easy to distinguish from each other. There was the temperature, people sleeping or being active, scents he couldn’t quite describe, and the different animal noises. It wasn’t as reliable on unfamiliar planets, and it really broke down at dawn and dusk. The light levels could change so quickly, without any non-visual signs. He resigned himself to the fact that he would have to ask, if he wanted to know in those situations. 

  Inside, everything became more complicated. Some light sources made noise, and some didn’t. Unless he knew a building, he had no way of telling if the flat surface on an outside wall was a window which let in light, or just a panel. And even if it was a window, when he was inside, all the signs of “day” and “night” were more muted. 

  Maybe it was just a skill that Kanan hadn’t yet fully learned, maybe it was literally impossible to pick up anything more without being able to see. He didn’t know. 

  He had only found one reliable method, which regardless of circumstance worked most of the time, and that was to judge by other people’s behaviour. If somebody entered a dark room, the first thing they did was search for a light to turn on, unless they were trying to be stealthy. People generally moved differently if they couldn’t clearly see where they were going, even if it wasn’t totally dark. 

  Of course, that didn’t help when the person in question perceived light levels differently. Or maybe it did. It didn’t matter so much how bright it was, as whether Ezra could clearly see in it or not.


	16. slim

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set some time in the future, once they've just recently gone to Yavin IV.

Ezra stomped into the Ghost, and didn’t bother to greet Hera.

  “Rough day?” she sympathetically asked. 

  He groaned in response, and flopped down into a seat. “I swear, if I hear one more person talk about miracle cures, or say _‘I read about a treatment, it’s a slim chance but it might work’_ , I’m going to....” He shook his head. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. Something I’ll regret, probably.”

  “That would explain why you’re back so early,” she noted. He had intended on going around the base, and she knew it would have taken longer.

  “Why do they keep assuming I’d need or want something like that?” he continued. “I’m totally fine with how my vision is.”

  They both knew that wasn’t true, but he had learned to accept it and live with it; and he was, most of the time, something much more closely resembling “fine” than the alternative. 

  “Give them some time,” she said, “they’re just getting to know you here. Eventually you’ll run out of people who think that nobody else has mentioned it.”

  “Until the next batch of recruits arrives,” he darkly said.

  He turned his head to look at her. From what he had told them, at that distance he wasn’t able to see facial features, just a skin-coloured blur, but it felt better to still look at someone, even though he couldn’t get any useful information from it. “Is it ever going to stop? Will people just keep on asking stupid things like that, forever?”

  She carefully considered her answer. “With people who know you, they’ll quickly learn that it isn’t wanted. That won’t necessarily stop them, if their goal is to annoy you, but it won’t be out of ignorance. As for everyone else....” She sighed. “Part of it is likely that you have sight remaining. They think of you as someone who is mostly 'normal’,and must surely want to get back to being completely 'normal’ in that respect. Kanan almost never has that to deal with, only the questions of what happened.”

  “So people will stop being as stupid around me once I’m totally blind? Great! At least I have _something_ to look forward to.” 

  There wasn’t really anything she could say in response to that. He didn’t seem to want an answer, just a chance to express his frustration. “Aside from that,” she said instead, “how was your walkabout? The base here is quite different from on Atollon, and I haven’t gotten the chance to explore as much as I’d like.”

  He knew she was trying to steer him away from an unpleasant conversation topic; she hadn’t been very subtle, after all. This time, he let her. There were instances where all he could do was talk about what was _wrong_ , never a shortage of items for that list, but thankfully this wasn’t one of those times.


	17. fresh

“I overheard you and Hera talking once,” Ezra suddenly said.

  Kanan waited to see where this was going. It had to be something Ezra wouldn’t normally talk about, so he needed to be receptive. The matter might never be brought up again.

  “You complained about how someone handed you a datapad and expected you to be able to read it, because you could do all sorts of other things with the Force.”

  He remembered that, now. The other person had seemed offended at first, started to say something, realized he _couldn’t see_ , mumbled vague apologies, and walked off. 

  “Then Hera said that _she_ knew what you could and couldn’t do, more or less, but nobody else on the base did, other than that you could get around and fight normally.”

  Those were two very important activities, with the lifestyle he led, but they didn’t encompass everything. 

  “She said that if the two of you could go over everything, what the Force doesn’t compensate for, then she’d share it around so people wouldn’t be expecting you to do impossible things.”

  Before that conversation, he hadn’t really thought about what he still _couldn’t_ do; he was working off of six months of blindness and feeling helpless, and comparing everything to that. 

  “You started with that you couldn’t recognize things by colour, or get anything from a holographic map. That was pretty obvious, and I think you just said that to get it out of the way. Then you mentioned not being able to read labels and know what flavour a bar was, which was something I hadn’t even thought of.”

  Ezra swallowed, and Kanan remembered how a fresh wave of pain could come by when you least expected it.

  “I kind of wanted to hear more, but then I ran off so I wouldn’t start crying.”


	18. greed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set during 'Steps into Shadow'. Canon-compliant.

“Kanan will be proud of you.”

  “Yeah? Well, he has a funny way of showing it, considering he’s never around.” Ezra Bridger turned and walked off. 

  “Where is he, by the way?” Hondo called out. “I thought he would have been involved in planning something like this.”

  The young man stopped walking, but didn’t even turn his head. “He was hurt,” he said curtly.

  That couldn’t be it. “Not like a Jedi to let a small thing like injury take them out of the fight,” Hondo said. “Why, I once knew –”

  “Knock it off,” Ezra said, “just stop it. You don’t know anything.” He thrust his hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders. 

  Hondo watched him walk away. “He has indeed changed,” he said to himself. “Ah, youth.” 

  Captain Syndulla came up to him. “Ezra doesn’t like to talk about it,” she quietly said, “but you might as well know, if you’re going to be along with him. A few months ago, he, Kanan, and one other person went to a planet to try and deal with an issue they’d been having. They apparently succeeded, but Ahsoka –”

  “Ahsoka Tano? Togruta? With the white and blue....” He made a gesture above his head. 

  She blinked. “Yes, did you know her?”

  “Of course I knew little Ahsoka!” He smiled. “Fascinating girl. Very spirited. Caused a tremendous amount of damage and lost profits, but what’s a bit of destruction between friends. I’m so glad to hear that she survived. How is she, by the way?”

  “She never returned, and it’s been long enough without any contact that she’s presumed dead.” 

  Oh. That was unfortunate; but it didn’t change much, since Hondo had thought that she died years ago. “I am so sorry. Such a loss to the galaxy. Now tell me,” he said, “what else happened?”

  Her voice was flat, conveying no emotion, but that in itself was informative. “Kanan was blinded in the fight, and Ezra feels responsible for both that and Ahsoka.” 

  “If he didn’t attack them, then there’s no reason to feel guilty.” He waved a hand. “Those things happen.” It was just like a Jedi to think that everything revolved around them. It was so much simpler to be a pirate. Why, if he had felt guilty every time a member of his crew had been injured in battle, he wouldn’t have had any energy to pursue their target, and it would have all been for nothing.

   She looked at him, and it was obvious that she had herself tried to get the point across. “He didn’t take it well, and Kanan didn’t take it well, and that only makes both of them feel worse. Ezra at least has managed to channel that into his missions, but Kanan hasn’t been doing much of anything. Even things he doesn’t need sight for.”

  “Like listening in on mission briefings,” he finished. 

  There was something important he was missing there, Hondo just knew it.... Ah. That was it. 

  “Does he still have that lightsaber?” he asked. “Because if he isn’t going to use it, I could –”

  “No.” 

  He spread his hands. “I had to ask.”

  She looked at him incredulously. “Do you think of anything other than your own greed? Do you _care_ about anything, at all?”

  “I care about plenty of things! Most of which you would say don’t count.” And in a world where everything could be taken from you without warning, it only made sense to check every potential opportunity. 

  She sighed and rubbed her forehead. “Go see Zeb, he’ll help you get ready to go.”


	19. high

During N0151-A’s term as the medical droid for Chopper Base, numerous plush tookas were distributed. Only six of those were of exceptionally high quality, for recipients who were judged to have suffered considerable loss. 

   A man who experienced significant bilateral ocular trauma. 

   A woman with brain damage from a head injury. 

   A man who experienced severe genital trauma. 

   A woman who experienced a miscarriage. 

   A man with a degenerative disorder leading to total loss of sight. 

   A woman who experienced spinal cord injury. 

  The brain injury patient was unable to continue work in her previous capacity for the Rebellion, due to impairments with memory and executive functioning. No longer providing care for her, N0151-A was not formally entitled to information on her status, but apparently she was still giving whatever support she was able to. 

  The spinal injury patient was reassigned to a placement where her care and mobility needs could be sufficiently met. Data analysis did not require full use of one’s arms or legs, but Chopper Base was not in possession of the resources which allowed her to continue functioning. 

  The remaining four patients, those who could be adequately treated on location, eventually resumed their previous duties on the base, even if such a result would not have been expected for some.


	20. witch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon-compliant.

There were no more witches on Dathomir. 

  There was nobody, really. Only one Nightbrother without even a proper name. 

  “Maul”, that was what he had been given; a word, not a name. Later, the title “Darth”. 

  He rejected the Sith and their titles and everything that used him up and threw him away. He would belong to nobody but himself, and all that he owned would belong only to him. 

  That didn’t leave him with much. Everything he had was either scavenged or ruins, or scavenged from the ruins. He had never learned to create, only destroy. 

  The world around him was empty. There was space for people, where they had lived and thrived, but now there was nothing.

  He hoped to fill some of the empty, soon. Ezra Bridger was everything he hoped for, if only the boy could be made to see reason. 

  If only “brothers” and “friends” were not just myths, lies told to the gullible. If only there could be a relationship other than enemies, or master and slave.


	21. wasp

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set some time in the future.

Hera turned in her seat as the team came in. “Did you find the supplies?”

  Zeb set the bags down, making sure they were out of anyone’s way. “For once, everything was where the contact said it would be. They just forgot to mention a few things,” he grumbled. 

  Ezra lightly punched him on the shoulder. “Come on, it wasn’t _that_ bad,” he said. “The buzzing was annoying, but those wasp-creatures were pretty slow and they weren’t as determined to eat our flesh as some insects we’ve come across.” 

  “You’re only saying that because you couldn’t see them. I’m telling you, there was nothing but murder and torment showing on their faces.”

  “Are you sure you’re not just scared of bugs?”

  Hera shook her head, smiled, and began to lift off.


	22. significant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set the day after 'Lesson One', referencing something that hasn't been posted yet.

Somebody was at the door. Kanan didn’t get up from his meditation. He could feel their hesitancy, they might not actually want to talk to him. 

  There came a faint knock. “Hello? Are you in there?”

  Sabine.

  “I’m here,” he said. “You can come in.”

  The door slid open, and she stepped inside.

  “You can turn the light on, if you need to,” he added. 

  Her arm reached to where the light switch was located, then her posture subtly shifted. It must have been dark. She didn’t sit down; she just stood, awkwardly. 

  Apparently words weren’t going to come easily to her, not without prompting. “What did you want to ask me?” he said. 

  She sighed. “Was it that obvious?”

  “Why else would you be here?”

  “Maybe I just wanted to chat?” It was a transparent excuse, and they both knew it. “But no, I did have a question.” 

  She leaned against the wall, and fiddled with... something, it didn’t make a very distinctive noise and Kanan didn’t feel it was important enough to focus on. “What does it mean to have significant vision impairment?” Her feet moved, like she was trying to find a comfortable position. “You were the one to mention it, back then, about the prognosis, so I thought you might know.”

  He raised a hand to indicate that he was thinking about his answer. Enno-fifteen had mentioned a lot of things, many of which Kanan had very intently not paid attention to, back in the early days after Malachor. More recently, he had learned about acuity and angles for the visual field and low-light vision, and he already knew the normal meanings for “significant” and “severe”, but not any specific medical usage. 

  “I don’t know,” he eventually said. “I can give you a guess, but it won’t have any more authority than whatever you can imagine. All I’ve learned for certain about various levels of vision is, well...” he waved a hand in front of his face, “‘no light perception’. I heard that one often enough. If I think about it, maybe 'light perception’ had been mentioned as the best possible outcome, but it didn’t happen, so I had no reason to learn what it was.”

  “I....” She crossed her arms. “I’m sorry for bringing it up.”

  “You have nothing to feel sorry for. You had a valid question, and unfortunately I wasn’t able to answer it.” He smiled. “If you still want to know, ask Enno-fifteen. As long as you don’t ask for anything patient-specific, you’ll learn more than you ever wanted.”

  He missed her smiles, but they still carried over into her voice. “I can believe that. Thanks.”

  She hesitated by the door, as if there was something more she wanted to say or do, then she left.


	23. code

“It’s not a code,” Sabine insisted. “The tactile alphabet, dot writing, whatever you want to call it, it’s just a different form of writing. We can’t use it for our secret communications.”

  She crossed her arms. “Sure, most people might not recognize it, but obscurity in and of itself is not a viable form of encryption. And it isn’t even that obscure! I was taught about it at the Academy, and even if we didn’t learn it by heart we were still able to recognize it, and know what it was called so we could look it up, if ever anybody did the exact thing you’re talking about doing.”

  She started pacing. “Even aside from people who were trained to intercept and decipher messages, there are entire subcultures whose asynchronous communication is represented by the tactile alphabet. It’s just how they write, they wouldn’t even realize that it was supposed to be secret! 

  "It’s not a code,” she repeated. “There are books done in the tactile alphabet. You do not get books published in code! The medical droid has a sign on the door written in this. You do not have signs, public signs meant to tell people where to go, written in code! They wouldn’t be very useful signs if they were!” 

  She threw up her hands in frustration. “And if anybody had paid attention to what I said in the first place, we wouldn’t need to be having this conversation now! You’ve just wasted everyone’s time and energy! Ugh!”

  She became aware of the people staring at her, well beyond her original audience.

  “Um, sorry?” she sheepishly said, and sat back down.


	24. communicative

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon-compliant.

When Ezra stopped communicating, he would run off for hours at a time, sometimes leaving in the middle of a conversation somebody tried to have with him. He denied that anything was wrong, and pushing the matter only ended with him pulling away. 

  When Kanan stopped communicating, he shut down. He would say that he was meditating, even if that only seemed like an excuse for avoiding and ignoring everybody. When he was forced to interact, he said as little as possible; he answered direct questions in maybe a sentence at most, and that was it. 

  When Hera stopped communicating, she was still active. The difference was in what she said and how she said it. Everything had to have a purpose; it was either a request, an order, or a response. There was nothing of “Hera” in it; it could have been said by anybody else, and it would be exactly the same. 

  Sabine and Zeb got to be very familiar with all of those.


	25. track

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set during 'Dokma Science'.

“I was out some distance beyond the perimeter earlier today,” Hobbie said, “and I saw some interesting tracks.”

  Ezra looked up from the dokma he had been staring at. “What, did the dokma draw a message? ‘Warning: we are slow and uncooperative’?”

  Now there was a mental image. Hobbie took a moment to savour it. “No, nothing like that... but can you imagine how useful it would be if they did?” 

  A grin, and they came all too rarely from Ezra now. “Heh, if only.” 

  “But no, it wasn’t the dokma. I don’t know _what_ it was from.” 

  Ezra frowned. “Can’t be that difficult, can it?” he said. “There’s the dokma, the spiders, people from base walking in weird patterns just to mess with you.... Not a lot of options.”

  _It wasn’t footprints, I’d be able to recognize those, my vision is perfectly fine_ , he almost said, but didn’t. “Don’t forget about the bugs, and the convorees that flew by once,” he said instead.

  “Yeah, those too.” Ezra made a dismissive gesture. “Still not many critters here. I wish there were, we’d be able to race something other than these annoying little shells-for-brains.”

  “Well, you know what they say about wishes.”

  “What? No, what do they say?”

  “'If wishes were wings then we’d all fly away’.” Hobbie looked at him incredulously. “You’ve never heard that one before? What sort of backwater planet do you come from?”

  “Lothal,” Ezra defensively said, “and it’s not a backwater planet. Anyways, that expression makes no sense. What kind of wings is it talking about? Like A-Wings or Y-Wings, or the actual wings on a bird?”

  “...huh. I have never thought about that before. I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I guess it’s just one of those things.”

  “Speaking of birds, maybe those were convor tracks? They have to touch ground eventually, and that long tail might drag behind and make it look weird,” Ezra suggested. “The bugs are too small to leave marks in the ground, and they’re almost never on the surface anyways, so I don’t know what else it could be.”

  “I suppose it’s possible,” Hobbie conceded, “but it doesn’t feel quite right. Who knows, maybe it’s some kind of weather pattern, with how the wind blows things around.”

  It wasn’t a very convincing explanation, but it was more comforting than what the alternative opened up. There were almost certainly other animals on the planet, ones they didn’t know about, and everyone had assumed those were all far away, at the poles or in the distant ocean. If that assumption was wrong....

  He pushed the thought away. There was nothing to suggest that the track’s source was any danger to the base. It was just one more unknown on the planet. They could live with that.


	26. differences

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set during 'No Worse Than Before'.

“Talk to me, Kanan,” Hera said. She leaned forward and directed her gaze at his eyes, for all the good that would do, even if they weren’t closed. “What are some of the differences I need to be aware of?”

  He raised an eyebrow, and she was glad he had taken his mask off; it was so much easier to communicate with him when his face wasn’t obscured. “Aside from the obvious?”

  “What you think is obvious,” she corrected. “And what I think is obvious.”

  “Not always the same thing,” he finished, “I remember the flower-smuggling incident too.” 

  He tapped his fingers in thought. “Ezra isn’t me. It’s obvious, but you still need to keep that in mind. Even if we were in the same situation, which we aren’t, we’d have different responses and different needs.”

  Basic, yet necessary. 

  “Continuing with the incredibly obvious: he can still see, for now. There are some things he needs help with, but there are more things he doesn’t need help with, and he’ll get upset if you offer to assist with the wrong thing. He’ll probably get upset anyways, but it will be even worse if he thinks that you think he’s totally incapable.”

  “How do I know which is which?” she interjected. 

  Kanan spread his hands. “Observe, extrapolate from what you know about his vision, ask and hope that you actually get an answer.... Honestly, I don’t know. And to make it even more confusing, since his condition is progressive, it will keep changing. For some time.”

  The skin around his eyes tightened. “He has time,” he said. “It’s not sudden for him. He has time to learn what he needs and time to get used to it. I get the feeling from him, though, that he doesn’t consider it a good thing, but rather just more time to spend dreading going blind.” He sighed. “I can understand it, somewhat, but he doesn’t realize what a gift he was given, to be able to prepare.”

  She reached for his hand, and his fingers wrapped around hers. “We can’t change his mind for him,” she said. “It’s always easier and more obvious from an outside perspective.”

  He briefly smiled, but there was no joy in it. “I can only imagine how frustrating it must have been, watching me cut myself off from everyone and refuse all the help you could offer. I had to learn for myself, and make my own mistakes, and I guess he does too. All I can do is be there and offer advice, it’s up to him to decide if he’s going to take it or throw my own failings back at me.” 

  Knowing Ezra, that was a very real risk. But he was worth taking that risk.

  “Light,” Kanan said, “that’s a big thing. Make sure there’s enough light for him. He needs it.” 

  “I never left you in the dark,” she said. “It felt too much like giving up on you. Even when we knew... even when we both knew it wasn’t going to matter to you again, because it still mattered to me.”

  He tilted his head. “Do you still do that?”

  “Sometimes,” Hera admitted. “Not intentionally any more, only out of habit. You don’t have to worry about me turning the lights off on Ezra, at least.” 

  “That’s one potential problem averted,” he dryly said, “now we only have infinity more to go.”

  “Infinity _minus one_ ,” she primly pointed out, before grinning despite herself. Sometimes the old jokes were the best. 

  His brow wrinkled. “What’s so funny about that?”

  She didn’t facepalm, but only because her hands were occupied. Of course, there was no reason for him to get the reference. “It’s a line from an old holodrama I used to watch as a child,” she said. “I’ve never seen it anywhere other than Ryloth, so I can’t share it. It’s funny when you know the context, though.”

  “I’ll trust you on that.”

  “Back on topic, what other differences can you think of? I know that he won’t be in any physical pain, so that’s covered.”

  “He can hide it,” Kanan eventually said. “I don’t just mean this,” he vaguely gestured at the scar across his face, “although that’s part of it. For me, it was never an option, deciding whether or not I wanted to let on that I couldn’t see. From what I’ve heard, it’s obvious as soon as you get a look at me. Ezra won’t have that. 

  "Right now, he can hide that he has a vision problem. He _has_ been hiding it. And he’ll be able to hide it for a while still, but not as long as he hopes. I don’t just mean that other people don’t know,” he added. “In most circumstances, he can convincingly tell himself that nothing is wrong with his sight.”

  “Which you were never able to do,” she concluded.

  “Not exactly,” he said, sounding oddly reluctant. “Once the burns were healed, if I kept my eyes closed and didn’t face anything I knew would be bright, I could pretend it had all been a bad dream. Of course, that stopped working the instant I tried to do anything more than sitting around.” 

  She had not actually known that, even though it made sense when she considered it. She did know that sometimes he would still wake up and wonder why everything was dark. She’d witnessed one of those times, and the look on his face had been heartbreaking. 

  “What does this mean for us?” she said, moving away from the more painful memories. “To me it seems like you’re saying that he avoids thinking about it, because he can; and while it makes him feel better for the moment, it prevents him from learning how to deal with it before it becomes unavoidable.”

  “Pretty much.” He let go of her hand, and pushed back a loose strand of hair. “There is one more thing though.” He didn’t meet her gaze, or even open his eyes, but she could feel his attention clearly focused on her. “We’ve gone through this before.”

  The crew of the Ghost had already suffered one member losing his sight. They were still around. It wasn’t the end, and they had proof of it. 

  “We know more now, than we did back then. We won’t have to work everything out from scratch. Not that you hadn’t been supportive, but....”

  “I know. None of us really knew what we were doing.” If she was being honest, they still didn’t know what to do, but it was better than it had been. 

  Should she add that Kanan had first-hand experience of functioning without working eyes…?

  “And not to sound arrogant, but there’s also me.”

  Ah. He said it, so she didn’t have to. 

  “I learned the basic skills, despite my best efforts at times, and I can use the Force to compensate for sight in most cases; I can share what it _doesn’t_ compensate for, so he won’t beat himself up over not being able to do that. I might not know how to explain it right now, but,” and he smiled, “years ago I didn’t know how to train somebody to use the Force, and somehow I managed.”

  “We’ll manage.”

  “We will.”


	27. monster

Rex set down his emptied mug. “Civilian children are weird,” he announced.

  “No argument there,” Kanan said, after swallowing his mouthful of beer. “A few weeks ago, after we delivered a shipment of medical supplies to their village, a little girl asked me if a monster had eaten my eyes.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing.” Kanan shrugged. “Her father immediately apologized and dragged her away.”

  “At least that one makes sense if you look at it from a certain angle,” Rex grumbled. “The kid I’m thinking of, he said that I didn’t have hair on my head and his baby sister didn’t have hair on her head either, which meant that I was a baby and he was older than me and so I had to obey him.”

  Kanan snorted in laughter, and tried to cover it up by turning it into a cough. “Was I ever that young?” 

  “Probably! But at least I know that _I_ wasn’t.”


	28. manipulation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set during 'Dokma Science'.

There were necessary risks, and then there were senseless risks. Hobbie had been told often enough not to take the second kind, even more so lately. The Rebellion _needed_ pilots who were as skilled as him. Even aside from his inherent value as a person – they were quick to add that in, as if he would have internalized everything the Empire wanted him to believe – he was valuable to them, and shouldn’t throw that away. 

  A pilot needed to manipulate the controls, quickly and accurately. He was fine for that; his hands, arms, and reflexes were all in full working order. A pilot needed to make good judgments, fast. While he probably wasn’t the smartest person on base, he was by no means stupid. A pilot needed to get proper information from the dials and display at a glance. He was pretty sure he was okay for that too; _but_. A few days ago, he had been pretty sure that the only visually-impaired person on base was the masked Jedi. 

  To keep on being one of the best pilots around, all of those things needed to be in good condition: hands, reflexes, brain, eyes. He owed it to the Rebellion, to everyone, to stay that way. Eye problems could come from something other than injury and go unnoticed, as Ezra’s presence reminded everyone. There was that chance, and it was a pointless risk to _not_ check for it, if possible.

  He knew that the base’s medical droid did eye exams. Apparently it offered them to everyone, regardless of the reason for their visit. It had become something of a joke. He’d also heard that you didn’t really need to make an appointment, as the droid was almost never busy. 

  There was no point in telling anyone. Ezra very obviously didn’t want to talk about his eyes, and it would inevitably get brought up if Hobbie mentioned he was getting his vision checked. Wedge had already said that he was going to be busy for most of the day, so he wouldn’t even notice that Hobbie wasn’t around when he normally was. The captain only needed to know if there turned out to be a problem. 

  It was just to make sure that nothing was wrong. Like doing regular maintenance on a ship, even if there hadn’t been any problems. That’s all it was. 

*

  Afterwards, once it was confirmed that his vision was healthy, he told himself he had never been worried.


	29. culture

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon-compliant. Set some time after 'Hera's Heroes'.

“I haven’t given up on getting the kalikori back,” Hera said, before anyone could ask that. “It belongs to the Syndulla family, and Thrawn has no right to it. Still,” she looked around at the gathered Ghost crew, “I’m part of more than just the family I was born into, and I want something that reflects that.” 

  “Uh, Hera?” Ezra spoke up. “You might not have noticed, but... you’re the only one here who even knew what a kalikori _was_ , before you tried to get yours back.” He crossed his arms. “I don’t see how we’re going to be much help.”

  “I’m not asking you to help me build a Rylothean kalikori. None of you are from Ryloth, it wouldn’t mean anything to you. I’m asking you to help me build something that represents all of us.”

  Sabine already had a sketchpad out. “What’s the basic form? Any elements that specifically need to be included? What about material?”

  “There are traditional shapes and aspects,” Hera said, “but none of them are strictly necessary. Historically, before the design became formalized, there were only two requirements: all of the pieces need to fit together, and they have to be sturdy and stand up to normal wear, so it will still be around for future members of the family.” 

  She had not actually known that before; it was just a happy accident that there was historical precedent, which she discovered in her research on constructing a kalikori from scratch. 

  “I’d also add that it not be overly large, to keep it portable, and that there aren’t any entirely-visual designs, so that all of us can properly experience it.” She didn’t look at anyone in particular as she said that. “Beyond that, anything goes.”

  Chopper beeped a suggestion of using rare and expensive metals as a component, and then snickered.

  “Anything _within reason_ , if we can’t acquire a part, we can’t use it.”

  Zeb raised a hand. “Can you tell Chopper not to take any of the bunks or weapons apart for pieces? Again?”

  Chopper warbled innocently. 

  Hera sighed. “ _Nobody_ should take anything apart for use in constructing this. We aren’t desperate for materials, and even if we were, family is more important than a representation of family.” 

  “Stealing parts from the Imperials is however acceptable,” Kanan added. He smiled. “It’s what we do.”

  Ezra shifted. “Is that it for now?” he asked. “I have something I was going to do, and I don’t want to be too late.” 

  “You can go,” Hera said. “None of this has to be done right at the moment, just keep it in mind. You don’t even have to do it at all if you don’t want to, that would completely ruin the spirit of it.”

  “No, I want to, it’s just... I have something else right now, but I’ll think about it.”

  He turned to go. She didn’t see him leave, because Sabine came over, blocking the view of the door, to show off her sketches. “I had a few ideas, if you can just tell me how these look....”


	30. tension

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set a few months in the future. Teases a storyline that hasn't happened yet.

Zeb crossed his arms and frowned. “Do you think we should go after him? He seemed pretty upset.”

  Sabine watched Ezra’s form vanish in the distance. “I don’t know, how good are you at sprinting? We probably can’t catch up to him until he’s already been there. Besides,” she said, “I can’t blame him. If I’d heard that a friend was hurt bad, I’d probably react the same way.”

  “Isn’t Hobbie your friend too?” Zeb asked. “You were the one to get him out of Starstrike Academy, after all.”

  “Not really.” She looked away. “He hung out a lot with Wedge when they first got here, and back then Wedge got all moon-eyed whenever he saw me, so it was just awkward. And after that, we didn’t really have anything in common. We’re on good terms, but we’re not _friends_.”

  “He and Ezra are, though.”

  “Yeah.”

  Zeb suddenly laughed. “You know, I think this is the first time ever that Ezra has gone to the med droid without loudly complaining every step of the way.”

  “Heh, you’re right! He _hates_ going there.” Her smile faded. “If only it was for a better reason.”

  “Are there _any_ good reasons to visit a medical droid?”

  “I suppose if you have non-medical business there....” She sighed. “He can’t be dying, right? Hera would have told us if he was, or said nothing at all.”

  “Hobbie isn’t dying,” Zeb said. “Not unless something new and horrible came up. It still can’t be anything good, with how she said he was ‘injured’. Is that the same way she’d talked about Kanan?”

  Sabine pulled those painful memories to the front of her mind, and considered them. “I don’t think so,” she said, “but then again, she’s close with Kanan, not so much with Hobbie. It wouldn’t affect her anywhere near as much.” 

  “Yeah, you’re right about that.” 

  He looked out towards the base. The med droid’s office wasn’t visible, not from that angle, there were other buildings in the way. “I hope Ezra will be okay,” he said. His ears twitched downwards. “He says he’s better now, and I’m not sure how accurate that is, but if a friend has significant medical problems, that might bring back a lot of it for him.”

  “He’ll be so upset if he needs to spend more time around the med droid,” she half-jokingly said, but her attempt at humour fell flat. It was too close to the truth to be comfortable. “I hope Hobbie will be okay too,” she said. “He’s a nice guy, good pilot, and whatever happened, he didn’t deserve it.” 

  “As long as he –” Zeb stopped. “No, never mind. You don’t need to worry about things that might never happen.”

  “Tell me anyways, I’m pretty sure that whatever I’m imagining now is worse than what you were going to say.”

  “If he’s hurt badly enough, or can’t recover properly, he might get transferred away to somewhere else. Like what happened to that woman with the head injury.”

  Yeah, that was bad. Not the “worst-case scenario” – she knew by now that things could _always_ get worse than whatever your mind conjured up – but still not something she wanted.

  “Maybe it’s just a broken leg,” she suggested. 

  Zeb didn’t even need to respond to that. They both knew that it wasn’t the case. 

  “If it ends up being really bad... no.” She shook her head. “Ezra wouldn’t want us there with him. And if it’s _not_ that bad, let’s hope, then we’d just be in the way. I guess we should just stay here and try not to worry too much, until we know more.”

  Once they knew more, _then_ they could worry again.


	31. relieved

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set a few months in the future. Continued from the previous chapter.

“Hey guys,” Ezra said.

  Sabine looked up. She and Zeb had been trying a dejarik variant called “hellchess”, which, among other things, used pieces from games she’d never heard of. It didn’t capture her interest, but even if it had, they’d been waiting for Ezra. 

  “How was –”

  “Did you know Noisi will let you in to see a patient if that person specifically says you can come in?” He laughed. “I hadn’t expected that either. Would have thought the droid would do everything he could to be as annoying as possible.”

  “You spoke with –”

  “Nobody else seems to realize how annoying Noisi actually is,” he continued. “I don’t know if that’s because everyone is is kind of stupid – no offence – or if he just has it in for me in particular.”

  “What –”

  “Oh, had you heard about –”

  “Ezra,” she finally said.

  He stopped.

  “It’s okay,” Zeb said, turning off the game and facing Ezra. “If you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to. Do you feel like sharing how he is?”

  “Don’t worry about me, nothing’s wrong. Hobbie’s fine.” His grin faltered. “He’ll recover. His ribs were also injured, I think cracked, so it hurt whenever he breathed deep. Even with the painkillers, since most of them were local. But Noisi put something on his chest, so at least his ribs should be better by tomorrow. Then he’ll be able to laugh without almost screaming in pain. Yeah,” he grimaced, “bad idea, don’t do that.”

  But Ezra had already known that about rib injuries. A bit over a year ago, Zeb lost a fight with a speeder and acquired a very impressive collection of bruises. They’d been running low on supplies and hadn’t been able to provide anything more than basic treatment, so he just suffered until it healed, and as his roommate, Ezra suffered along with him. He must have been very distracted, to not remember that. 

  “How is he otherwise?”

  “Noisi said he should be out in a few days. Hobbie, I mean, out of the med centre.” That wasn’t exactly answering the question, but probably the closest they were going to get from Ezra at the moment. “As for when he can fly again... that depends on a few things, but it shouldn’t be too long.” He scowled. “Less time than it took me to get back, anyways.” 

  He pasted a smile back on his face. “At least it wasn’t his eyes, that would just be weird, ahaha. Anyways, I had some training scheduled with Kanan for right around now, so I need to get to that,” he said, and left. 

  If they hadn’t known him, that would have been a believable lie. Ezra had missed scheduled training before because something else was more important, or just because he’d forgotten it. However, he also had a pretty long track record of making excuses to duck out of an uncomfortable situation, even when he didn’t actually need to. 

  “That went better than it might have gone,” Zeb eventually said. 

  “That’s a very low bar by now,” Sabine reminded him. 

  “Yeah.”

  “I guess we should be relieved,” she said. “Hobbie will be okay eventually, whatever it is that happened. Ezra will talk about it whenever he feels like talking, if he ever does.”

  “He might not have to, depending on how fast the news travels. He’d know that by now… but since he’s distracted, there’s a good chance he won’t think about it,” Zeb said. “I’ll remind him next time I see him, and hope that prevents him from being surprised.”

  “And then he can remind Hobbie of that too,” she added. “Hobbie would _also_ know that, but he probably isn’t thinking about it either.” She frowned. “Do we need to make a list? ‘Things you should know about how people will treat you after a severe injury’?”

  “Now you just sound like Hera.”

  “Hey, she’s the greatest pilot in the galaxy, it is _not_ a bad thing to become more like her!” She rested her arms on the table. “List or no list, we’ll do what we can to help. For Ezra, and for Hobbie.”

  “For both of them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is it; the end of this month of prompts. It's been fun, and it got me writing. I didn't get everything done on time, but for most of it, I was writing one thing a day. Hope you enjoyed getting some regular content again. 
> 
> In a few days we'll hopefully begin posting the current storyline stuff; as usual, it will be up on tumblr first, and then put here the next day.


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